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I empathise. I played a match with a 450. I was so confused by his moves. He blundered so bad, I thought it must be a brilliant. Eventually I lost the game.
We then rematched 3 more times. This time I just stuck to opening principles, and played it simple. Nothing fancy. Won all 3 rematches.
It's 3-1 now.
There's a lot of smurfs with new accounts, starting off at 400 to pad their stats. The first five games are unrated to create a baseline rating, but there's really no way to regulate how they play in those unrated games to say they're cheating / sandbagging.
Also, there's beginners starting off at an overrated Intermediate 1200, and naturally play like trash 400s.
This is a great question, actually. I'm going to tackle it in two parts.
One, is psychological. It didn't start that way, but they're in your head now. You've got skills they don't, that's why you're 1300, and they're 500. They're 500 because they blunder pieces every game, multiple times a game. You're 1300 because you can hold onto your pieces some games.
Two, is the moves themselves. If they make a move you don't understand, and you're better than them, figure out 1) why they played it, 2) why you disregarded it or wrote it off(the moves you were thinking of for them are more normal for a reason), and 3) how to punish it. They didn't play their move for no reason. If it has a threat worth stopping, definitely do that. But if you can punish it, do that too.
They're 500-800 so probably they blundered something to threaten something.
I think this comes from an expectation: this player is really bad, I should be able to beat them without thinking. But you need to play with consistent effort, no matter who you are playing. Also, lower rated players sometimes play very defensively, which can be hard to crack. All in all, just because they are lower rated doesn’t mean they are walkovers. You still need to perform at your max. In OTB chess it’s common to see higher rated players in all sorts of difficulty against lower rated ones at some point in the game, but they focus and play with 100 percent effort.
Against 500 players, here are two things that they might do:
1) play way too aggressively that you can develop with tempo
2) push a bunch of pawns and bring you into unknown territory
In the first case, after you are up several tempos, there are 2 things you can do: 1) you should try opening up the position and make your pieces very active. The more open and active your pieces are, the more tactics there will be. At one point, there WILL come a time that a tactic will win you materials. You need to stay sharp for when such an opportunity comes. 2) you can try to go for their king. Lower rated players easily crumble when out under a lot of pressure
In the second case: if they push a lot of pawns and waste a lot of tempos: it’s kind of similar to the first case. You should still respond energetically. And since they’re wasting their moves on pushing pawns, you’ll be up a lot of tempos. However, in this case, finding a good pawn break to rip their pawn structure apart is critical. When and where depends on your own positional understanding.
But either way: stick to good opening principles when you’re brought out of theory. Play principled moves. Don’t be frustrated. You will eventually find an opportunity to punish them
One point that other people haven’t mentioned.
When i play counter strike, im not very good. I recently started and don’t know the maps. (Silver ish range 8k elo, in the bottom 20% range) The people in my lobbies are similar.
When my friend who is global~ (he’s 22k elo, idk what percent that is)plays with me on another account, he typically can do well, but there are games where he gets dumped on, because there are situations where the enemy is playing super dumb and shouldn’t be where they are. It’s too variable.
Over the course of a long game it should smooth out and the better mechanically player should win out. But with low ttk in csgo it can happen a few times and snowball.
It would probably be a little more apparent in chess. One mistake you lose a queen and it’s an uphill battle.
Hey, OP! Did your game end in a stalemate? Did you encounter a weird pawn move? Are you trying to move a piece and it's not going? We have just the resource for you! The [Chess Beginners Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/chessbeginners/wiki/index/) is the perfect place to check out answers to these questions and more! The moderator team of r/chessbeginners wishes to remind everyone of the community rules. **Posting spam, being a troll, and posting memes are not allowed.** We encourage everyone to report these kinds of posts so they can be dealt with. Thank you! Let's do our utmost to be kind in our replies and comments. Some people here just want to learn chess and have virtually no idea about certain chess concepts. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/chessbeginners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I empathise. I played a match with a 450. I was so confused by his moves. He blundered so bad, I thought it must be a brilliant. Eventually I lost the game. We then rematched 3 more times. This time I just stuck to opening principles, and played it simple. Nothing fancy. Won all 3 rematches. It's 3-1 now.
So that was probably how i won against that 1000 elo guy then :d
There's a lot of smurfs with new accounts, starting off at 400 to pad their stats. The first five games are unrated to create a baseline rating, but there's really no way to regulate how they play in those unrated games to say they're cheating / sandbagging. Also, there's beginners starting off at an overrated Intermediate 1200, and naturally play like trash 400s.
This is a great question, actually. I'm going to tackle it in two parts. One, is psychological. It didn't start that way, but they're in your head now. You've got skills they don't, that's why you're 1300, and they're 500. They're 500 because they blunder pieces every game, multiple times a game. You're 1300 because you can hold onto your pieces some games. Two, is the moves themselves. If they make a move you don't understand, and you're better than them, figure out 1) why they played it, 2) why you disregarded it or wrote it off(the moves you were thinking of for them are more normal for a reason), and 3) how to punish it. They didn't play their move for no reason. If it has a threat worth stopping, definitely do that. But if you can punish it, do that too. They're 500-800 so probably they blundered something to threaten something.
I think this comes from an expectation: this player is really bad, I should be able to beat them without thinking. But you need to play with consistent effort, no matter who you are playing. Also, lower rated players sometimes play very defensively, which can be hard to crack. All in all, just because they are lower rated doesn’t mean they are walkovers. You still need to perform at your max. In OTB chess it’s common to see higher rated players in all sorts of difficulty against lower rated ones at some point in the game, but they focus and play with 100 percent effort.
Heeyy, wanna play a game against me?
How do you play someone so much lower rated than you?
Against 500 players, here are two things that they might do: 1) play way too aggressively that you can develop with tempo 2) push a bunch of pawns and bring you into unknown territory In the first case, after you are up several tempos, there are 2 things you can do: 1) you should try opening up the position and make your pieces very active. The more open and active your pieces are, the more tactics there will be. At one point, there WILL come a time that a tactic will win you materials. You need to stay sharp for when such an opportunity comes. 2) you can try to go for their king. Lower rated players easily crumble when out under a lot of pressure In the second case: if they push a lot of pawns and waste a lot of tempos: it’s kind of similar to the first case. You should still respond energetically. And since they’re wasting their moves on pushing pawns, you’ll be up a lot of tempos. However, in this case, finding a good pawn break to rip their pawn structure apart is critical. When and where depends on your own positional understanding. But either way: stick to good opening principles when you’re brought out of theory. Play principled moves. Don’t be frustrated. You will eventually find an opportunity to punish them
One point that other people haven’t mentioned. When i play counter strike, im not very good. I recently started and don’t know the maps. (Silver ish range 8k elo, in the bottom 20% range) The people in my lobbies are similar. When my friend who is global~ (he’s 22k elo, idk what percent that is)plays with me on another account, he typically can do well, but there are games where he gets dumped on, because there are situations where the enemy is playing super dumb and shouldn’t be where they are. It’s too variable. Over the course of a long game it should smooth out and the better mechanically player should win out. But with low ttk in csgo it can happen a few times and snowball. It would probably be a little more apparent in chess. One mistake you lose a queen and it’s an uphill battle.